Making us Stickier
Posted on July 10th, 2010 by Paul McArdle – 1 CommentOver the 10+ years we’ve been in business, we’ve been lucky enough to gradually stumble upon a formula that provides us our own measure of stickiness with clients, and potential clients, in the electricity market:
1) We have products, such as NEM-Watch, that have proven sticky products (the manifestation of ideas) in their own right
2) The way our clients perceive us (in terms of “making the electricity market understandable”) has proven to be understood by many (though not all) people who come into contact with us – as we have been told by those who responded to our recent survey.
3) In addition, we’ve had some (though far from all) of our communications prove to be fairly sticky.
Given where our bus is headed, we have a keen interest in building on this base to make ourselves much stickier in future – in the above ways, and more
1) Binary Review
It’s for this reason that this book was of great interest to me…
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The Book |
What we thought |
 “Made to Stick - Why some ideas Survive and others Die” by Chip Heath and Dan Heath |
… and it did not disappoint |
| Full Disclosure – yes, that’s a tracked link to Amazon shown above. We buy quite a large number of books on a wide range of topics, all relevant to our business in some way. If you did happen to purchase the book from Amazon, they’d throw a few shekels our way, which would help us to buy (and hence publish reviews of) even more books. Hence, Karma would return the benefits to you… |
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2) Why did they write the book?
The book starts with the (tall) tale about a friend of a friend who knows someone who had a drink with a stranger at the bar and woke up in a bath full of ice, minus two harvested kidneys.
The authors (two brothers) talk (from p10) about their mutual interest in determining why some ideas stick (and persist and propagate) whilst others fade away.
They reference Malcolm Gladwell’s book “The Tipping Point” as an inspiration for them to distil their understandings into a coherent thesis, which this book is. They note (as Josh did his post) that Malcolm’s book provided three main steps in the sequence:
Part 1 was the need to get the right people
Part 3 was the need for the right context
Part 2 was the “stickiness factor” – which became the subject of this book.
3) The SUCCESs checklist:
The authors claim (p247 in my copy) that “the SUCCESs checklist, then, is an ideal tool for dealing with communication problems”.
I’d strongly recommend that you read the book yourself to understand the full context – here is a teaser (and a memory-jogger for me, in future):
(a) Simple
The key here is to understand that “Simple” means that the message must be both, simultaneously:
i. Aligned to the core of the meaning; and
ii. Compact
(b) Unexpected
The two key principles:
i. Surprise gets our attention
ii. Interest keeps our attentionIt is logical (though surprisingly not common sense) that the two must go hand-in-hand for the message to be effective. Otherwise we revert to the glory days of the dotCOM boom, with people in various animal suits paraded the highways to attract attention to who-can-remember-what service.
(c) Concrete
The authors pose the question “how do we ensure that our audience understands and remembers our message” (assuming we have their attention – above)?
By being concrete, they say!
We need to get rid of TLAs and industry jargon – and speak in plain english, with respect to tangible objects (not intangible concepts).
The authors describe this as finding “the universal language” (p115).
From our point of view, this is what our business revolves around – making the electricity market understandable – and we do this reasonably well, at least to the stage where we a large number of clients. However, we certainly aren’t at the stage where we’re making the electricity market understandable to the mums and dads at home, yet.
(d) Credible
For our message to endure, the message has to be believable and the audience has to agree.
I can’t find a way to sum up this chapter in a single sentence or paragraph – you’ll just have to read it yourself.
They do make this very interesting point (p143), which I agree with:
Statistics are rarely meaningful in and of themselves. Statistics will, and should, almost always be used to illustrate a relationship. It’s more important for people to remember the relationship than the number.
This is the challenge we face in the software we seek to develop – we seek to provide our clients the means to easily identify, and communicate, these relationships (rather than just represent a series of numbers on a page) – with some products we’ve done this pretty well, with others we still have some ways to go.
(e) Emotional
For our message to endure, the audience has to care.
Again, read the whole chapter to gain the full context. I would just like to highlight 3 separate points for my ease of future reference:
i. When it comes to hearts, follow Mother Teresa, who apparently said (p165) “If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will”
ii. The authors imply that thinking about statistics shifts people to a more analytical frame of mind – and hence they are less likely to think emotionally. This, then, is the continuation of the issue noted above under “Credible”.
iii. The authors reference (p177) such marketing gurus as John Caples as people who started advertising on the path to appealing to (or exploiting, depending on your perspective) people’s emotions.
We’ve read John Caples’ book “Tested Advertising Methods” (amongst a number of others in that domain as one more step in our pursuit of ongoing improvement) but have not had time to post about it.
(f) Story
For our idea to stick, the audience has to be able to act.
The authors note that stories (e.g. parables, etc) have proved effective over centuries as the means by which to inspire people to act, by ensuring that they become active listeners as the story is recounted.
The authors include some excellent discussion (from p224) about how our challenge is more to spot good stories than to create them.
The authors list 3 basic types of plot:
i. A challenge plot (e.g. David –vs- Goliath)
ii. A connection plot (e.g. the good Samaritan)
iii. A creativity plot (e.g. the authors did not mention it, but I would throw in the story of Apollo 13 here)
and the authors note that the type of story used needs to fit the context in which it is required.
4) The Easy Reference Guide
For our own internal reference in future, I’ll note here that the Easy Reference Guide (which begins on page 253) provides an excellent list of memory joggers that will be useful to those who have read the whole book.
[...] to topics, including: (a)